The day before being Santa

I had a pre-Santa meeting today with one of the teachers from the kindergarten. We sat down together in the Teachers' Room and she showed me a kind of timetable for tomorrow all in Japanese. She explained that at 9:30 I should go to the kindergarten, go up some stairs and into a room. There, I will find a box of Santa clothes to get changed into. I then go down to the Hall and will be presented to two-hundred children who will have no idea that I am coming. I will greet them and then... the questions begin.

Just like in my school when a an ex-politician came to speak to us, the questions are all pre-arranged. She translated the first question for me:

“Why do you wear red clothes?”

She looked at me and I realised that I was supposed to provide my own answer.

“Because…it’s my favourite colour.”

She seemed pleased with that answer, so we moved on to the next question.

“How old are you?”

I decided that Santa should be old and mystical. “One hundred” I replied, she wrote it down.

“How many children do you have?”

I thought about this and decided, “I don’t have any children. I think of every child in the world as being like my children, from every country.” She smiled and I felt like a soppy fool.

“Why do you fly in a sleigh?”

Now this question is really hard, I couldn’t think of an answer. She suggested that it should be because Santa is really good at flying sleighs so we went with that.

“How many Santas are there?”

At this I wondered who had made up these questions, this is one of the most awkward questions kids can ask about Santa. I do wonder how parents get around the problem of kids going to shopping malls and seeing multiple Santas. I said, “I don’t know,” and she wrote it down as my answer, which actually I didn’t mean it to be. So there we go, Santa doesn’t know how many Santas there are, it doesn’t make any sense but they are only five so maybe they won’t notice.

Then it is just a small matter of giving out two hundred presents. Finally they sing for me and I make my grand exit.

Then, as translated from the timetable by my Japanese friend the teachers are performing a small play. This year they have chosen to perform The Little Match Girl. In case you are not familiar with the story, one synopsis is, “a young girl dies selling matches during the cold Winter.” It is one of the most depressing stories in the world. So tomorrow it will be, “Bye Santa, thanks for the joy and presents. Now let’s learn about a girl who froze to death.”

I feel like all my efforts tomorrow to spread cheer will be entirely in vein given the misery that will follow my hohohoing. I can only hope that the Japanese version of the story is more cheerful, like maybe she lights a match, Pikachu comes and lights his cigarette from it. Then he explains how only one match could ever light his cigarette and her match fits! Then they kiss, he turns into a prince, she yells “I choose you” and they get married. Sorry Hans Christian Anderson but that’s the story I want them to perform tomorrow. If a guy dressed as Pikachu doesn’t pass me in the corridor as I am leaving then I am not going to be happy.